Girl in Snow(37)

Back in the one-room church, Ivan stared right through him. Those glassy eyes. Unsettling smile. Ivan pulled him close for a threat of a handshake. At that moment, Russ was certain that Ivan—and maybe Jesus himself—knew every one of his shameful sinner’s secrets.



Russ slips into the house just before sunrise. At some point, Ines climbed back into their bed. Russ kisses the crown of her head and changes quickly into a pair of athletic pants. Plain white sweat shirt. A hat, to keep his ears warm. He laces his shoes quietly by the door and sneaks back out into the rising morning.

It’s five o’clock when Russ starts down Pine Ridge Drive. The morning is brisk and frosty, but most of the snow has melted, and Russ can hear his own footsteps, slapping methodically on the pavement. He passes sleeping neighbors; Russ has lived here for years, but in this neighborhood, he is the Cop, and no one gets too close. He jogs past Lee’s house—Cynthia and Cameron’s now—without slowing. When Russ runs, theirs is like any other house on any other block. A small victory.

Russ considers: someone out there knows what happened to Lucinda Hayes. It’s likely that he passed the killer’s house just moments ago, that he is passing it now, that the killer snores into a cotton pillowcase while Russ runs right by. Russ thinks of Cameron’s old bedroom, with its twin bed and sky-blue walls, and he wonders about genetics. About the inevitability of your own heritage, of badness passed down reluctantly from father to son.

Around him, the mourning neighborhood is sound asleep. The sun is bald and orange on the horizon, and when Russ gets to the edge of the suburb, he picks up speed.

Soon, he is at the base of the mountains, his heart rate is at least 140, and the peaks tower over him like wild, hungry beasts. It is this moment in which Russ understands himself best. In which he could easily say, My name is Russ Fletcher, I am a man living a certain sort of life, and I am happy. This gasping moment is free of obligation, of expectation and that bruised yellow past. It is only Russ and his beating man’s heart, Russ and the cloud of his breath as it unfurls white in the cold morning, Russ and the burn, burn of his legs. The needle-prick attention of his mind, as it focuses on blazing extremities. Running, Russ is okay. Running, he moves forward.





Day


Three




FRIDAY

FEBRUARY 18, 2005





Jade





We are on a beach. Sun glares bright from all sides. Lucinda and I lie flat on our backs, bellies cast toward the sky. We are bundled in winter clothes: me in my army parka, Lucinda in her yellow down jacket and sparkly tights. A seagull screams.

Lucinda is speaking, but the wind and waves are too loud. Horizontal, she is very beautiful. Angelic—I see what they mean. We lie like lovers sharing a pillow, but her seashell mouth is opening and closing, opening and closing, her chest is heaving, tears are falling sideways over the bridge of her sloping nose. I can’t hear you! I try to say, but my mouth is stuck shut. Shoulders glued to the ground. I can’t hear you! She’s screaming now, but no sound comes out, arms wild as they reach for me. Lucinda begs and cries and pleads and all of it is lost in the ocean’s seaweed jumble.



Five in the morning. I wake up shaking. Outside, it’s still night, the world suppressed.

The book is beneath my dresser, a magnetic force. I keep it there so Amy doesn’t find it. She’d tell Ma, who’d probably check me into rehab or Jesus camp.

When half an hour goes by and the lumps of clothes start to look like faces and small animals, I flick on the nightstand light and lug the book onto my mattress. I navigate by feel to Chapter Two: “Signs from the Dead.”

“When you receive a sign from the dead, you must ask: What is the deceased trying to tell me? Is there anything I can do to ease their transition into the spirit world? When the deceased communicate with the living, they are bestowing a task: you must seek out their unfinished business.”

I slam the book shut. Pad to the bathroom with my hands as guides and start the shower running cold. I step in with my pajama shirt still on and try to rinse the dream away from my vulnerable unconscious.



Only here, in the shower, with my clothes still on—only here will I let myself remember the day of the ritual. The Thorntons’ driveway, Lucinda in her flip-flops, how I waited until Ma and Terry were settled in front of the TV. I snuck up to my room, desperate with the realization that the Thorntons had been calling me less, that soon they’d stop entirely and I’d have to get another job, all because of Lucinda and the perfect gold braid down her back. I imagined that hundred dollars clamped in Lucinda’s fist, her face all dimples and eyelashes.

I assembled everything in my room. You’re supposed to be comfortable when you perform a ritual—a lot of people do it naked. But I refuse to be naked. Ever. So I put on an old swimsuit, a faded, stretched Hawaiian-print one-piece.

First, I covered a spatula with brown construction paper. The wand. Next, I constructed the altar, sloppy and quick, using a few tealight candles from the dollar store—the kind that don’t burn for more than twenty minutes.

In the middle of the altar, I propped up my favorite photo: Zap and me on the first day of second grade. We’re standing on his front porch, squinting into the sun, and Zap has one pudgy hand raised above his brow. Now, we both have coiffed Sharpie moustaches drawn expertly beneath our noses.